My family is pretty Italian. I grew up just knowing how to make pasta, now I can make all kinds of Italian fare from scratch, it’s certainly my comfort area in the kitchen. I’ve since branched out and I do like to cook quite a lot.

But there’s this one ridic incident that stands out in my mind so clearly!

I must have been like 12 or so… and I offered to make dinner. I can’t even remember what the whole meal was, I just know that there was rice involved. I’ve NEVER been the kind of person who reads instructions. In fact, I always just jump into a project and teach myself… I do the same in the kitchen too, hardly ever consulting recipes. Now a days, it works out alright for me, I have a great natural sense of flavors. I have a good sense of direction, good instincts.

But back in the day, tween Rose had NO IDEA how to cook rice.

I thought it was just like pasta, and so I just filled up the pot with water. I didn’t measure how much water, I thought I could drain it later. I didn’t realize there was a precise absorption thing going on with the making of rice.

Instead of cooking, the whole pot turned into this terrible weird paste. It was rice mush. Basically, porridge.

My Dad laughed SO HARD. Man, he still cracks up about that rice ordeal to this day! The best part was that even my little sister knew how to make rice, and as the whole thing played out – she was cracking up too. Even she knew you had to measure the water!

My whole family just LOLed hardcore. To this day, they still ask if I’ll be cooking rice or if I need some help, etc. It’s a long running family joke.

I’ve made all kinds of crazy cooking snafus, but that’s totally the earliest one, one that really stands out in my memory.